1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for authoring or generating, storing and retrieving multimedia messages that may include audio, text documents, images, web pages (URLs) and video. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and method for automatically generating images and links in a multimedia message system. The present invention also relates to a hierarchical message system providing nesting of messages within each other.
2. Description of the Background Art
A large percentage of a typical person's day is spent communicating with others through various mechanisms including oral and written media. Further, there is often a tradeoff between rich, oral communication media and less rich, written communication media. While oral media enable negotiation, clarification, explanation and exchange of subjective views, written media enable the exchange of large amounts of accurate, objective or numeric data.
This dichotomous relationship between oral and written communication similarly exists within the electronic realm. Simple textual email messages, although easy to author, typically do not allow rich, expressive communication as may sometimes be required. On the other hand, tools for creating richer, more expressive messages, such as multimedia presentation software, are too complex and time-consuming for casual or day-to-day use. Furthermore, multimedia presentation software typically is not designed for use as a bi-directional communication or conversation tool. Multimedia “documents” produced using this software tend to present information to an audience, rather than allow user interaction and self-guided learning.
Existing messaging systems employ a single primary media. E-mail uses text, while voicemail uses recorded audio for conveying the message. Some systems allow other media objects to be “attached” to a message, but do not support explicit reference from the message content to the attached objects or particular pieces of the attached objects. Such references are needed in order to allow the sender of the message to, for example, refer to a particular paragraph in a printed document or a face in a photographic image.
A mechanism for specifying these references and a visual representation of the references and indicated media objects is required. Furthermore, a user may wish to refer to/include one or more previous messages in a new message. An efficient means for creating and viewing such hierarchical messages is therefore needed.
Therefore, what is needed is a method for creating a simple and effective multimedia-authoring tool that overcomes the limitations found within the prior art.